ChristMyth

Three days in the tomb?

I found this website that tries to explain away the three days and three nights Jesus was supposed to be in the tomb and found it interesting. I'm sure that its nothing new, but since I didn't see any conversations on the topic, I thought I might post it to get your thoughts.

Christmyth

ChristMyth

Ok. I know that this thread must have been found boring to most of you since you banished it to page 2 of the BH&C forum without anybody even posting a reply to it. But, personally, I believe it is an important topic to discuss since some christians out there do hold to a Wednesday Crucifixion.

Despite my searches on google, which brings webpages that seem to agree that a Wednesday/Thursday Crucifixion could take place, I could not find anything that might refute this idea.

Is it possible for a Wednesday/Thursday crucifixion? If so, doesn't this take a bit of steam out of the contradiction usually brought up about the three day/three night burial? And if it does, then an explanation has been found and the contradiction should be laid to rest.

Christmyth

mountainman

The banishment to which you refer above, if you carefully ascertain
the systematic manner by which threads in every forum are first
entered and then responded to, is indicative only of a relative
inclination of posters to respond to your thread rather than
their's or indeed, any other thread currently active in the forum.

IOW, your inference that such activity involves "banishment",
is an inference that is not at all valid.



As far as I am aware there have been substantive date and
thus perhaps day-of-week alterations and discontinuities in
the period covering the last two millenia.

The calendar between then and now is not contiguous.
Perhaps there is a list of such "discontinuities of calendar"
available, by which your investigation might be better
serviced.

Personally, IMO, christianity is a fourth century fiction
chaotically thrust upon the empire, by the supreme
imperial mafia thug Constantine, at the council of Nicaea.

However, if you insist to research these scanty records
of the past, in order to allocate a day-of-week to any
specific historical event, you will need to be aware of
the calendar "discontinuities" mentioned.

Best wishes,



Pete Brown
www.mountainman.com.au

ChristMyth

This is true. I guess "banishment" may have been too harsh a word.





This would be a place to start. Thanks. I was actually suprised there wasn't more information out there about this supposed Wednesday/Thursday crucifixion idea from a critical standpoint. It seems that its been around a while so you would think someone would have taken it more seriously than they have.

I agree that christianity is probably based on myth. I am by no means trying to defend christianity or come up with some lame apologetics to try to change anybodies point of view on the subject (especally here where it seems most of the others eat, sleep, and drink Biblical History.) I do think, however, that any idea that a apologists use to convience others that their myth is true should be looked into and weighted against the historical evidence, no matter how small that idea may be.

While most of the time there are a good fifty or so conversations about wither or not Jesus was historical or mythical, if he rose from the dead or not, if the book of Mark was the first written or not, and a host of others that could be listed, there were only two threads over a year old that had anything to do with this idea presented in the OP, neither of which was very helpful imo. (one just gave a few reasons and then posted links to another converstation that was more name calling than acutal information, the other had nothing to do with the topic at all.) The library itself gives no essays or links to where you could go to see if this information was accruate or of anybody even interested in the topic. There were only the same old idea that Jesus could not have been buried on Friday and rose on Sunday and be counted three days/nights which, again, was no help. Google, as I stated, was of no assistance either. I was beginning to see a gap that needed to be filled, and since I am no where near as versed in History as the people here in BH&C, all of whom I hold in high reguard, I though I might see if there was someone who could show me something I missed or someone who had heard of the argument and could tell me where I might find a good rebuttal to it. I'm still hopeing to peak someones interest.


Actually, I'm looking for a good reason why the crucifixion, if it took place, could not have been on a Wednesday/Thursday which is something a bit more tricky, I believe, than trying to pinpoint one event in history for a certain day, especally with the evidence we have for the crucifixion. I know that the burden of proof is on the one making the claim, but if you don't have a good rebuttal to that claim, then it ends up making the evidence look pretty good no matter how shitty the evidence is. I mean, I could claim JFK was shot by The Three Stooges and show really bad evidence to prove my point and if you don't have a good rebuttal, then Larry, Mo, and Curly (Shimp) are up a creek according to those interested.

Thanks for the reply Mountianman

Christmyth

Doug Shaver

Some inerrantists have told me so. The problem is with the gospels' clear assertion that he was crucified on the day before the Sabbath. For obvious reasons, that is ordinarily taken to mean Friday.

According to the apologists for argue for a Wednesday or Thursday crucifixion, in additional to the seventh day of the week, the Jews did observe a few other special days as sabbaths, and some of these occurred during the Passover season. I have not had a chance to do any followup checking on the sources they quoted to back this up, so my jury is still out on that one.

If it is confirmed, it would resolve the contradiction, yes.

On the other hand, it would be one more instance of divine misdirection. On the assumption that God inspired the Bible, he seems to have gone out of his way to have the authors write it in such a manner as to invite rational people to perceive it as riddled with errors and contradictions. If indeed there were sabbaths besides the seventh day, God surely knew that knowledge of this fact would be lost to the non-Jewish portion of the world, so why didn't he inspire the gospel writers to be more specific about which sabbath they were referring to?

Sheshbazzar

The events related within the NT conform to a specific time and sequence schedule based on the the writings of the OT.
Any alleged "discontinuities of the calender" do not alter the pattern and measurement standards as laid down in the Torah, and overarching ethical requirements for observing and maintaining just and perfect measurements.
Please review;
Lev. 19:35-36
Deut. 25:13-16
Proverbs. 11:1,
16:11
and 20:10
A bit more abstract, but still relevant to the subject, are
Ezekiel 43:10
Micah 6:8-11
Jerem. 31:35-39
Rev. 21:15-17

The seven day week was the standard then as now, thus the first day of the first month of the year is limited to only one of the seven possibilities provided by the seven days in a "week", thus the "tenth day of the month" and "the fourteenth day" and "the fifteenth day" of the month will in every year occur on specific weekdays determined by which of the seven weekdays is accounted as being the first day of the first month.
The possible sequences for the first fifteen days of the "month" are thus,
If the "month" begins on "the first day of the week", the end of the fifteen day count will always occur at the end of a "first day of the week" that concludes the fifteen days.
if the "month" begins on the "second day of the week", the end of the fifteen day count will always occur at the end of the "second day of the week" that concludes the fifteen days.
A "third day" beginning results in a "third day" ending, and so on for each of the seven possible sequences.
The perceptive will note that fifteen days in full measure, is three hundred sixty hours, and that the seven "possibilities" are comprised of seven lines of fifteen days, or seven circuits of three hundred sixty hours, for a total of one hundred five days, and/or twenty five hundred and twenty hours, note the half measure, and the sums of six lines. (minutes and seconds are also implicit in the connections with geometrical considerations)
The same being true also for the accounting of The Seventh Month.
Overlaying this pattern are also the divisions into the "watches" and
"courses" occurring in their precise order and sequence throughout the "Jubilee" cycles of days, weeks, months and years.

Sheshbazzar

Lugubert

The impatience of youth brought up on electrons! When my father the sea-captain travelled the seven seas, we were lucky if we received an answer to a letter within a fortnight.

More to the point, I think that the Easter chronology can be interpreted in too many ways to have either one realistic. One person (the Swedish Professor of English, Alvar Ellegård), advocates that the disiples' finding a ready Pesach lamb out of time in a town points to that J. Josephson was an Essene, going with another calendar than the mainstream Jews. There's also Ellegård's and other's problems with how the court procedures, nailing, taking down etc. could be matched to current laws.

There's also the problem that "the third day" might be a literal translation of the Eastern Mediterranean name for Tuesday in any of several languages.

mountainman

Thanks for this response.

It makes me appreciate the possiblity that the ancient measure
is still preserved in the modern world.

However to clarify one point, my reference to "discontinuities
of the calender" were intended towards the western calendar
(Gregorian), in which certain alterations were made:

1) to differentiate itself from the ancient traditions (at inception), and

2) to make some adjustments during its course since inception until now.

The point I'd like to clarify is this:

Can the western calendar be reconciled to the ancient tradition (eg: Torah)
such that the discontinuities in the former be accounted for in the latter?

Thanks again for your response.
It is encouraging to be corrected.


Pete Brown

InChristGE

Ok, then why don't skeptics actually try to make sure whether a Bible difficulty is actually a contradiction or not, instead of waiting for other people to clear it up for them?

God doesn't confuse anyone. The skeptics choose to confuse themselves.

Doug Shaver

I would love to pursue this tangent. If you are similarly eager for a serious discussion on it, please read this and then get back to me: http://www.dougshaver.com/christ/bib...a/bibcon00.htm

(The essay does answer your question, by the way. I'm not being evasive.)